Access to Core Course Materials Project: report of the needs analysis interviews

This report outlines the findings of the Access to Core Course Materials needs analysis interviews. Interviews were conducted with academics in thirteen departments (including one pilot interview). Individuals were asked to identify core materials in their subject, the specific needs of their department, their use of and attitudes towards the current teaching support services and their requirements for a future electronic service

Access to Core Course Materials Project: DigiCOMS: report of the pilot service

One of the objectives of the Access to Core Course Materials Project was to set up, run and evaluate a pilot electronic study pack service. The needs analysis demonstrated that the service needed to encompass a range of materials and so the service was broadened to include a variety of electronic course materials. The service included the production of electronic study packs, but also offered a digitisation service for other types of course materials; in particular a facility to make available in-house produced publications such as course handbooks and lecture notes. Related to this work was a separate project funded by a grant from the Sub-Committee on Innovation in Learning, Teaching and Assessment (SCILTA) in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health. The Project Officer was involved in setting up an intranet site to distribute a range of electronic course materials. The Department were particularly keen to include online assessment and for this reason it was decided to build the site using WebCT. This gave the Access Project direct experience of using virtual learning environment software, which could be compared to the simple course material system that was devised in-house. A full report of this project is available; however, the issues of relevance to the DigiCOMS service and an outline of the work is also discussed within this report

Access to Core Course Materials Project: Teaching Collection Experiment report

This report documents the third phase in the Access to Core Course Material project, known as the Teaching Collection Experiment. The work began in March 2001 and was completed in September 2001. The Teaching Collection is the name given to the printed reserve at UCL. It contains off-prints of essential course readings that are kept behind issue desks at both the Main and Science Library. Lecturers can place up to five copies of materials in the Collection, which are entered onto the library catalogue and given an unique identifying number. The Experiment investigated the feasibility of digitising a selection of this material and making it available electronically. This report documents the production process and compares the costs and quality of an in-house service with out-sourcing production. This allowed the project team to investigate the feasibility of offering a clearance and/or digitisation service in-house and the costs associated with such activities. The experiment also examined how this service related to the current activities of the Library and might be integrated into existing services. Following on from this experiment, a pilot service known as DigiCOMS was offered to a further 5 departments at UCL. The digitised material produced during the Teaching Collection Experiment was therefore made available through the DigiCOMS service. More details about DigiCOMS are available in a separate report. The Economics Department was selected to participate in this experiment, as they currently use the Teaching Collection to deposit a considerable number of course readings. Using a department from the social sciences also compliments the earlier work for the Dutch Department. It was also important to choose a department whose reading lists contained considerable numbers of published journal articles and chapters from books that required copyright permission from publishers. A selection of material that the department currently deposit in the Teaching Collection was identified, in addition to some material which students had found problematic to get hold of in the past. It should be pointed out at this stage that the distinction between a printed study pack and a teaching collection item in a print environment is significant, in particular for legal reasons, because a set of readings cannot placed within the teaching collection to avoid the copyright costs associated with producing a study pack. However, this distinction is less clear cut once material is made available electronically. Therefore, although the material in the teaching collection did not form a printed study pack, the set of digitised readings are referred to as an electronic study pack. Electronic permissions are also granted by publishers along similar lines to printed study packs, in that the pricing model is based on the length of a particular extract and the number of students on the course

Access to Core Course Materials Project: case study final report

As part of the Access to Core Course Materials Project a questionnaire was distributed to all academic departments at UCL to investigate their attitudes towards and requirements for electronic course materials. This research revealed that a number of departments had already undertaken work in this area and provide access to a range of electronic resources. It was therefore decided to undertake case studies of four innovative departments to compare the set-up and organisation of these systems, the attitudes of staff and students towards them and any problems or considerations that they had encountered. This information would be used to develop a series of models of course materials systems. It would also contribute towards the design of a pilot service that the Project would subsequently launch

Access to Core Course Materials Project: the Dutch Study Pack Experiment report

This report details the development of an interactive study pack for the Dutch department. The work formed part of the Access to Core Course Materials Project, which seeks to explore the possibility of providing course materials in electronic format. Dutch required assistance with developing a pilot interactive study pack that could be used in a bid for further funding. The Project Officer designed a basic version of the pack, which was then developed by Media Resources. This report outlines the developmental process, the problems and challenges that it presented and an indication of the likely costs involved in offering such a service. An interactive study pack lies at the more sophisticated end of what the Access project hoped to achieve; consequently the actual service that will be offered may be less complex than the model outlined in this report. This document replaces the report that was produced in November 2000 to include details about the evaluation work that was undertaken in March 2001

Students in the SADL: lessons from LSE’s digital literacy programme

This chapter focuses on a three-year digital literacy programme that ran at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) from 2013-2016, aimed at undergraduate students. The programme scaled up over this period to support students’ digital and information literacies using a student/staff partnership approach. Some of the challenges involved making the programme sustainable and scalable and while it ultimately did not continue, SADL provided inspiration to other institutions in the sector . The chapter provides valuable lessons for anyone working in the field of digital literacy support for students and offers strategies for success including suggestions about how to work in partnership with students